Children have real understanding only of that which they invent themselves, and each time that we try to teach them too quickly, we keep them from reinventing it themselves.
Jean PiagetRead
The child often sees only what he already knows. He projects the whole of his verbal thought into things. He sees mountains as built by men, rivers as dug out with spades, the sun and moon as following us on our walks.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Children interpret their surroundings based on their existing knowledge and experiences.
Jean Piaget emphasizes how children perceive the world through the lens of their limited understanding. Their interpretations are often projections of their thoughts and experiences, leading them to view natural phenomena as man-made or influenced by their actions, highlighting the developmental perspective on child cognition and understanding.
Themes
ChildPerceptionKnowledgeCognitionUnderstanding
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about child development in an educational setting.
More from Jean Piaget
All quotes →Logical activity is not the whole of intelligence. One can be intelligent without being particularly logical.
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Children's games constitute the most admirable social institutions. The game of marbles, for instance, as played by boys, contains an extremely complex system of rules - that is to say, a code of laws, a jurisprudence of its own.
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Everyone knows that at the age of 11-12, children have a marked impulse to form themselves into groups and that the respect paid to the rules and regulations of their play constitutes an important feature of this social life.
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Play is the work of childhood.
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The goal of education is not to increase the amount of knowledge but to create the possibilities for a child to invent and discover, to create men who are capable of doing new things.
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